You And Me And Our Thousand Year War
by Proton Star
Summary: There's one more person, one more piece that needs to be moved into place for this plan to work.


Title: You and Me And Our Ten Thousand Year War

Author: Proton Star

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, Marvel do. This iteration is 20th Century Fox's. No money is being made from this.

Fandom: X-Men (most particularly X-Men: First Class and X-Men 3)

Series: Part 6 (and the final part) of Becoming. Part 1 can be found here - s/9557059/1/The-Mind-Is-A-Fortress-And-Life-Is-A-Siege , part 2 here - s/11012804/1/All-The-Things-She-Said-Running-Through-My-Head, part 3 here - s/11374084/1/The-Turning-Of-The-Leaves, part 4 here - s/11731156/1/Early-Autumn-By-The-Swimming-Pool and part 5 is here - s/11961374/1/Children-of-the-Revolution

Characters: Mystique and Magneto

Ratings/Warnings: PG-12.

Spoilers: For X-Men 3.

Notes: I started to write this after First Class, and was trying to tie it to the previous X-Men films. And then DOFP was released so everything has been thoroughly Jossed.

Summary: There's one more person, one more piece that needs to be moved into place for this plan to work.

* * *

Mystique went to visit Erik next.

She didn't travel as herself, of course. The government were still watching him, ready to shadow anyone he spoke to so she wore the bland body of a lower ranking bureaucrat. Nobody would notice him, and it would be easy enough for her to disappear again once she was done.

The government had been uncertain about what to do with Erik. Magneto the terrorist could bend metal to his will while this man couldn't. But then again, he was found in the Alcatraz rubble, and had empty cure darts all around him. There'd been no civilians at Alcatraz. They knew he was Magneto but couldn't prove it, because all of the identifying information from his previous incarceration had vanished, courtesy of a worm Mystique had placed when she was hunting for him to break him out of prison after the UN plan had failed. When questioned, Erik pretended to have no idea what had gone on in San Francisco, so the government, unwillingly, let him go. They'd had him followed, and equally certainly were still keeping him under surveillance now, almost a month later.

Erik spotted the bland man and knew him for who he really was. They'd been together for far too long for him to be fooled by anything as obvious as appearance.

She sat down in front of him, pretending to prepare to play him at chess. Erik's opening move was very conservative. It meant that they could make it a long game without arousing suspicion.

Chess had never been her game. She played to an acceptable standard, after learning it young, keeping Charles entertained during long winter nights, but she'd never had the peculiar passion for it either Charles or Erik had.

They played silently for a while, the button on the clock and the clack of chess pieces on the board the only sound coming from their table. It gave her a chance to look at him, really look, with that ability to see things about a person that you only got from not seeing someone for a while.

Magneto had got old. Somewhere between breaking her out and now, he'd aged twenty years. Mystique knew what had caused it. It was losing his powers, and being imprisoned again, even if it was only for a short time on this occasion. She'd done time in jail, which had been bad enough, fixed in one body, and she didn't have the same associations with prison as Erik had. After Stryker's prison, Erik swore he'd never be imprisoned again.

"Come to gloat?" Because she was free, and he was not. He might not have been in jail any more but the surveillance on him meant he might as well have been. He couldn't reach out to other mutants. He couldn't reach out with his powers either, if Mystique's calculations were correct the injections probably hadn't worn off. Of course those calculations assumed the government weren't slipping him more of the drug somehow. She wouldn't put that past them, and it would be an understandable tactic.

She ran a finger along her forearm, allowing a stripe of blue to bloom and fade like pile in velvet. It was cruel, because she had her powers back and he didn't, but she felt he deserved it.

Something flared behind Magneto's weary eyes. It might have been hope that he'd get his powers back too, it might have been anger that she was taunting him. Either way, Mystique decided that it was better than the defeated look that had been there. She'd come to be angry with him, but to do that, she needed him argue back, not just sit there and take it. Magneto had never just sat there and taken anything in his life. It felt unnatural. She was a lot happier being furious with him than feeling sorry for him the way she did right now. Pity didn't come easily to her, and Magneto had never accepted being its object.

"I've come to talk. You're going to listen." That all Magneto did was nod in response was a sign of how tired he was. "You and Charles, you've been having the same argument since 1962. What are the humans going to do when they find out about us? They found out about us in '62, and we know what they've done. They've denied us, hunted us, killed some of us, and used some of us as weapons. They've tried to get rid of mutantkind any way they can. 'What are we going to do in response,' that's the question we need to be asking. And I'm not sure you can." She thinks his and Charles's problem might have been a mental version of the one she had when she spent a lot of time in one form, you sort of get stuck, forget how to shift yourself, to change the way you can and should. She'd spent that long as Senator Kelly that the people she shifted into immediately after had all worn glasses, because of how short-sighted Kelly had been, and how he'd never been without his glasses.

Erik s response was expectedly bleak. "What's it going to be, the shot to the head or the knife in the back?" They both knew she'd win any fight they had, even without weapons.

"Neither." That surprised him, Magneto had always disposed of tools that were of no further use to him. But Mystique had a use in mind for him. "You're going to be the Brotherhood's spokesman." Magneto had a way with words, of addressing meetings that Mystique had never quite been able to mimic properly. There was a gravity to what he said. If she'd been able to do it, that might have changed her strategy, but she couldn't which removed several options. They both knew she d considered the other ones though. "I'm going to gather together who I can of the Brotherhood, we're going to talk," and you're actually going to listen, Mystique didn't say, "and then we'll decide on a plan of action. I think I know what it's going to be, but we'll see. And whatever it is, no matter how much you disagree, you're going to spread it, and get us new members, or you can leave, that option's always open to you." Leave when Mystique said it didn't mean 'be assassinated', but it did mean, 'leave public view and stay quiet, or else'. Mystique had learned a certain amount about group politics over the years, and it was vital to have a clear chain of command, and rules about what happened to people who left.

She knew that Magneto won't say no, she doesn't even need to wait for his answer. He couldn't help it, she couldn't either if she'd been given the same ultimatum. They both need to be involved in the cause because ... what else was there for them?

They carried on playing despite the end of their conversation.

Erik won, he tended to, taking Mystique's king with his queen. "The queen, you see, is the most important piece in the endgame." Erik liked to give advice, and he also liked his chess metaphors. "But then again, she always was."

That was the moment Mystique believed this would work. She'd thought it would work, but thinking something and believing it were two different things.

"So, where do you go now?" Mystique was tempted not to tell him, in case someone was listening in, but when Magneto had been in charge, his refusal to give her the details of operations had frustrated her, and she wanted to be a better leader than he had been.

"They re releasing Pyro today. I m picking him up." Hank had managed to convince the government that all the imprisoned Brotherhood members should be released, even Pyro, who'd undoubtedly done his best to make himself as loud and unbearable as he could. Despite how annoying he sometimes was, she liked having Pyro as part of the team. They'd all been young and angry once, and it took time to learn how to focus that anger. At least he was angry about their situation, not satisfied with it like some of Charles's kids were. She could see why Pyro hadn't fitted in at the School. With a little time, time they'd have now with the ceasefire, Pyro would make a fine second-in-command. And later ... "You never know, in twenty years time, I might need him to have this conversation with me."

With that she left, ready to start the Brotherhood's new dawn.

* * *

End notes: And it mostly works, too. Until Charles gets reincarnated and then it all goes to hell in a handbasket rather quickly.

This is the final part of Becoming, and I'd like to thank everyone that's read all of the series. Sorry for how long it's taken me to write it all.


End file.
